Church History At Last

This fall, for the last time, I’ll teach my Early Church History course. (Next year we switch to semesters, and this course will be wrapped into a one-semester über-survey of church histry; I may occasionally teach topics in early history, but will no longer have this intro course).

For the occasion, I’m fine-tuning the Theology Cards game. I never erally liked the designation for people who died a natural death, so I’ll go fix that on all the cards.

I’m also going to look into make a set of Chronology cards. Pippa has developed in interest in Chronology in the past year or so, and we play by a simple set of rules (simpler than the rules given with the game): each player turns over a card and has to guess/say where that card fits among the cards in the other player’s tableau. For instance, my first card may be “Abraham Lincoln assassinated,” and Si’s is “The Battle of Hastings.” I draw “The beginning of the Tang Dynasty,” and have to determine whether that was before or after Lincoln’s death in 1865 (it was, founded in the early seventh century). Si draws “U.S. Bicentennial Celebration” and has to guess whether that came before or after 1066. Then I draw “Morocco conquers the Songhai Empire,” and I have to decide whether that took place before the beginning of the Tang Dynasty, or between that date and Lincoln’s assassination, or after Lincoln’s death. (It was 1581, so between the two otehr dates.) And so on.

I’ll make up a series of cards for the church history class, so that they can play this homegrown version of Chronology to learn the basic sequence of events in church history, and I’ll post it on the Disseminary site when it’s ready. And once I wangle the upgrade to our MT install, I’ll begin working on the Beautiful Theology reading group, I promise.